Monthly Archives: «May 2016»

This past Monday, the 40th annual Frameline (San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival) announced its entire line-up and it does not disappoint. The longest running LGBTQ film festival in the U.S will start Thursday, June 16 through Sunday, June 26. A few weeks earlier, Inside Out (Toronto, Canada) also announced its line-up, and will kick things off tomorrow, Thursday May 26 (running through, Sunday, June 5) with the International premiere of writer/director Chris Kelly’s, Other People, a dramedy which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past January.

While both festivals boasts some of the best foreign and American independent LGBTQ films in world, and sharing similar titles, each festival, respectfully, have a couple titles that are only playing at one of the festivals.

The one title that stands out the most might be the world premiere of writer/director, Matt Kugelman’s,Hurriance Bianca, featuring Bianca Del Rio as a teacher, Richard who gets fired from his small town school in Texas for being gay, and comes back as fierce Bianca, working on taking control of the school. The film features Alan Cumming, Margaret Cho, Rachel Dratch, and RuPaul. The film looks to be hoot and I sure hope it is one we can bring to aGLIFF this September.

Another film of interest is the North American premiere, Burn Burn Burn, the debut feature from director Chanya Button. When best friends Alex and Seph (featuring Downton Abbey’s, Laura Carmichael “aka Lady Edith”) lose their best guy friend, Alex, and decide to drive across the UK to scatter his ashes. Along the way, each woman is dealing with her own personal issues, including Alex who walked in on her girlfriend with another woman, and Steh hating everything and everyone at the moment.

Frameline, also has a few films not screening at Inside Out, even snagging an intriguing world premiere of its own, director Nick Corporon’s, Retake, has a lovely and potential potboiler mystery looped in it’s a romantic premise, “A lonely, middle-aged man hires a male prostitute to recreate a road trip from his past.” Anything sounds possible in this scenario, and has its hooks in us.

While it has only played a few festivals since it won the Teddy jury prize at this year’s Berlinale, Chilean pop star Alex Anwandter, directed, produced, wrote and scored, You’ll Never Be Alone, who based the film on a true story, from one of his fans being attacked by Neo-Nazis outside of a show in 2012. No question, the subject matter is bleak, but let’s hope Anwandter’s lives up to its Teddy award win.

AGLIFF HOSTS CAST OF HER STORY, THE TRANSGENDER DOCUSERIES PREMIERING ON HBO, TO AUSTIN WITH A SPECIAL PREMIER SCREENING AND FUNDRAISER

The Austin Gay And Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) today announced fundraising events, including an evening reception with the cast of the groundbreaking documentary series Her Story, a catered luncheon, and a screening of the series.

The reception will be held on Tuesday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Seven Building’s 8th floor “Living Room” at 615 West 7th Street and will include cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and a chance to meet the cast of Her Story. Tickets to the reception can be purchased for $50.00 via FirstGiving.

aGLIFF will also host a lunch at OutYouth with the cast for a meet and greet with area LGBTQ youth.

Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar will host the Her Story screening on Wednesday, May 18th at 7:00 p.m., followed by a question and answer session moderated by Meghan Stabler of the HRC Board of Directors. Tickets are currently on sale for $20.00 at the Alamo Drafthouse website.

A portion of the proceeds of these events will go to support the Queer Youth Media Project (a summer camp for queer-identifying youth sponsored by aGLIFF), aGLIFF and Out Youth.

aGLIFF President Charlie Ray said about the event, “As an organization, aGLIFF is committed to bringing LGBT content to Austin and we are so proud of our dedicated volunteers and the community that worked hard to bring Her Story and the remarkable women profiled in the series to Austin. We are hosting a fundraising reception and have partnered with Out Youth and HRC to support queer youth in Austin along with our own Queer Youth Media Project, a summer camp for LGBT youth, to create a film to premier at the festival in September. As state legislatures and ignorant politicians continue to attack the trans community, we know that being visible and standing together as a community to support our trans brothers and sisters is more important than ever.”